Today, April 15, Emancipation Day is observed in the District of Columbia. Normally, this holiday is celebrated in Washington, D.C. on April 16. However, since in 2011, April 16 falls on a Saturday, the observance has been moved one day earlier to … Continue reading →

To be a slaveholder was almost by definition to live in fear. While they proclaimed paternalistic feelings for their human property, slave owners regularly committed acts that created bitter hatred: whipping the disobedient; separating families; exploiting sexually black women; withholding adequate food, shelter, and … Continue reading →

April 12, 1861 was the day hostilities commenced in the American Civil War. It also was the day William Lloyd Garrison published yet another issue of The Liberator, the most prominent and longest published abolitionist newspaper in the United States. … Continue reading →

The last edition of Civil War Emancipation covered two high-profile enforcement actions of the Fugitive Slave Act that took place in April 1861 just days before the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. These actions did not escape the notice of the African-American press that existed on … Continue reading →

On April 8, 1861, the Richmond Dispatch ran a short item that would have given cheer to slaveholders. The piece simply read: The fugitive slaves taken from this city Wednesday morning were examined before Commissioner Cornean yesterday. The proof that they were fugitives … Continue reading →

As the United States careened toward Civil War, the British media took greater interest in the peculiar institution as it existed in the American South. In its April 6, 1861 edition, The London Illustrated News had two stories (with illustrations naturally) on slavery in … Continue reading →